As commissioner of New York City’s department of housing preservation and development, Vicki Been runs the largest municipal housing agency in the United States. A former university professor with expertise in both law and real estate, Been became responsible in 2014 for implementing New York’s goal to create or preserve 200,000 affordable homes over a decade. She is a keynote speaker Thursday at Vancouver’s Re:Address conference, organized by city hall to discuss the housing crisis. We asked Been what advice she could share with Vancouver. Her answers have been edited for length.
Q: What lessons do you think Vancouver can learn from what has been accomplished so far in New York?
A: The importance of community engagement early and often to get acceptance. Certainly we ran into a lot of headwinds …. because any time you do something comprehensive that affects every neighbourhood of the city, you are going to manage to annoy each and every person possible because somewhere in there there is going to be something they don’t like. But I think the lesson in there is we really did seriously listen to the communities and make changes and make adjustments, and ended up with a better product as a result.
Q: Your affordable housing is spread out across New York City. How did you get all communities to accept this housing, as opposed to locating it in just lower-economic neighbourhoods?
A: We allocate our housing through a lottery. … For 50 per cent of the housing, there is a preference for people who live in the “neighbourhood,” (which is) fairly broadly defined. And that assures people that if housing is placed in their neighbourhood, that they, their neighbours, their kids, their senior citizens, will benefit from it. That’s controversial, but I think it has been really critical in ensuring that we get housing built everywhere in the city … (and) to deal with those fears of gentrification and displacement.
Q: You’re creating a mix of housing for families, seniors, disabled people and the homeless, and for a range of incomes between the unemployed and households making up to $135,000 a year?
A: Yes, for example two per cent of our units in every new building are set aside for the hearing and visually impaired, so when the doorbell rings it is a light that flashes, or it’s an entirely braille apartment. … But we also try to serve municipal employees, because these are the first responders, they are the teachers, etc., and then we try to serve a range of income, because the affordability crisis is not just a very low income crisis. … And a city’s competitiveness depends upon it having a vibrant middle-class workforce.
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Q: Who are some of the people you’ve been able to help with your housing so far?
A: We have several buildings around the city that are targeted towards youth aging out of foster care. Sometimes they have babies of their own, but they are trying to go to college and trying to make a life for themselves. And our housing makes that possible because it takes away that hand-to-mouth existence. … One building is a combination of elderly veterans and youth aging out of foster care. You’ve got these veterans who know what discipline means but who have been beaten down by what they saw and the PTSD, and you’ve got these kids who are full of optimism but not necessarily full of discipline. … The lessons that they can learn from each other are really incredible.
Q: So far, NYC has financed nearly 53,000 of these homes (which have room for 130,000 residents) — 67 per cent from preservation and 33 per cent new units. How did you convince building owners to preserve units for affordable housing, instead of renovating and renting for more money?
A: We try to convince the owners of those buildings to use our lower-than-market cost of capital — use our loans, use our grants — in order to rehab your building. We will extend all that to you at below-market rates in exchange for your agreement to keep the building affordable for some period of time, usually 35 years, sometimes 40 or 50 years. That’s an economic calculation for the owner about whether what we are providing is significant enough to justify the cost to them of keeping the building at affordable rates.
Q: How do you get developers to build new affordable units?
A: We put out a request for proposals for our land, and we base our selection of the developer on how much affordability, how deep the affordability, how long the affordability is. We often allow mixed-income buildings because we think mixed-income neighbourhoods are the strongest neighbourhoods.
Q: You are coming to Vancouver to give a keynote address at a conference designed to give city hall new ideas to address our affordability crisis. What will be your key take-away message?
A: As we build affordable housing, and as we work to build neighbourhoods across all of these cities, we do have to really pay attention to this fear of gentrification and displacement. … That is a critical issue that we need to confront, and it is going to take all the great minds in Canada and the United States and everywhere else to come up with a way of dealing with communities’ fears while at the same time achieving the kind of change that we need to achieve.
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